A tremendous growth in the use of the Internet is projected. Much of the projected growth is expected to be in machines communicating across the internet. Manufacturers will monitor products in customers homes and business to determine the best times to service, repair or replace. Home owners will be able to monitor appliances, furnace, air conditioning, and security in their homes from around the world.
The increase in traffic however will slow an already over-burdened infrastructure of the internet. What is needed are ways to enhance the quality of communications on the internet without a corresponding demand for more band-width.
The growth of the use of the Internet has also resulted in a desire to make it easy to get access to dynamic information sources or monitoring/controlling different equipment, such as networked cameras, transducers, automated equipment etc. Most of the present systems require specialized programs and communications for making such information The need for specialized programs results in rather expensive solutions.
Another problem, when trying to make such information available to as many as possible, are the security arrangements, like firewalls, surrounding almost every company network today.